Think South American football and one of the first images that will come into your mind is falling ticker tape from the stands. That was established as far back as the Argentinean World Cup in 1978.

Fast forward to the present day: on Wednesday night the Copa Sudamericana match between Nacional and Universidad de Chile was abandoned after a Paraguayan assistant referee was hit in the head with a streamer/cash register roll thrown from the stands. The assistant referee was reportedly carried off a stretcher and referee Antonio Arias (PAR) abandoned the match. Goals in the 11th and 12th minutes had the home side, Nacional, trailing 2-0 at the time of the headshot, so it was most likely the work of a disgruntled fan with an impressively accurate throwing arm.

Byron Moreno, the referee involved in Italy’s controversial elimination from the 2002 FIFA World Cup, was sentenced to 30 months in prison on heroin-smuggling charges.

He made a successful career for himself as a soccer commentator on television and radio channels in Ecuador after his officiating days came to an end. But a change in his personal circumstances became the motivating force that propelled the 41-year-old to take a gamble on smuggling drugs past US Customs inspectors. "He was in debt. Personal debt. He was just in over his head, and he made a very foolish choice. And now he's going to pay for it," his defense attorney, Michael Padden, said after the hearing in Brooklyn federal court.

Moreno ran into trouble at John F. Kennedy International Airport after arriving on a commercial flight from his native Ecuador. During a routine inspection, he “became visibly nervous” and a customs agent felt “hard objects on the defendant’s stomach, back and both of his legs,” according to a criminal complaint. A strip search revealed that the lumps were 10 clear plastic bags containing more than 10 pounds of heroin, the complaint said.

Before hearing the sentence in federal court in Brooklyn, Byron Moreno apologized to his family and asked for forgiveness. “From the bottom of my heart, I am very sorry,” Moreno said, choking up and wiping away tears. Moreno, 41, had faced a minimum of nearly 3 1/2 years under advisory sentencing guidelines, but his lawyer argued that he deserved a break in part because he had been a model inmate since his arrest in September 2010 — even starting a soccer program at a federal jail in Brooklyn. Byron Moreno is to be deported back to Ecuador after serving his sentence.

Moreno became a hated figure in Italy after making contentious calls in the second-round match of the 2002 World Cup, when the Azzurri lost 2-1 in extra time. He sent off Francesco Totti, giving the Italian a second yellow card for an alleged dive in the penalty area 13 minutes into extra time. A 111th-minute goal by Italy’s Damiano Tommasi that would have advanced the team was disallowed, apparently for offside. South Korea scored the winner in the 117th minute.

Pierluigi Collina, regarded by many as the best football referee ever and now retired Italian official, was a guest lecturer in Belgrade at the inaugural Intesa Academy.

"I miss refereeing a lot. I still dream of being able to get out on the pitch with my whistle in a next life, but I know it’s impossible," said Collina with a familiar smile. The Italian is, however, involved in refereeing in a different mode, as a member of the UEFA Referees Committee. "After three years in Italy as the head of the Referees Committee, I was called up by UEFA president Michel Platini. Our team is small, there are only three members. We deal with referee preparation, selection and assigning them to games. My aim, my hope is not to find a new Collina – the best referee in the world – but to create a group of referees who could live up to the task of officiating extremely important and difficult games.

The former top referee commented he is not someone who could discuss the issue whether goal-line technology should be accepted in football. "This is something the international board decides on. Still, in the past three years in the Europa League and two years in the Champions League we have had the additional fourth and fifth referee on the pitch, and it has yielded good results. It is not a question about only goal-line technology, but also the situations in the penalty area like holding, pulling the opponent’s shirt, pushing at corners and set pieces. Analyses have shown that players, when they know someone is watching them from behind, are much more careful and as a result, the number of undetected offences has been drastically reduced. This is why this practice will be used in the forthcoming European Championships." Collina agrees with the suggestion that illegal betting is a painful issue in today’s football. "UEFA is very careful when it comes to it. A special department is in charge of the situation, working together with national associations. If we lose the battle against illegal bookmakers, football is done – it would be the end of it. This is an extremely important issue, a touchy subject and UEFA are taking good care of anything related to betting."

Are today’s professional referees who officiate matches at the top level – such as the Champions League – the future of football? "It doesn’t matter if they are called professional referees. We cannot expect a ref who works until 5pm to go to a training session and do it perfectly, because they are tired from work. When preparing for a match, a referee needs to watch out for details, take notes, do research, look into the laws of the game and prepare himself psychologically for the match. If he or she works until five, then there is no chance they can do it."

Collina admits he made a few mistakes during his days. "I refereed a number of really important matches and I made mistakes. Making mistakes is an integral part of any job. What matters most for a referee is to analyze the mistakes analytically and establish the reasons why they made them so they reduce those situations to a minimum. This is the key."

FIFA president Sepp Blatter believes referees should be full-time professionals if they want to work at the next World Cup. Blatter told The Associated Press that improving the quality of elite referees is his top priority for the game in the coming months and beyond. "We must do something for the top referees," he added, speaking at a tournament held in his honor by his family's home village in the Swiss Alps. "You can't have non-professional referees in professional football. Only professionals will be taken to Brazil in 2014". Blatter's call for change followed a series of high-profile errors by World Cup referees in South Africa, where just two of the 30 selected for FIFA duty listed refereeing as their full-time job.

"It's a new approach to refereeing at the highest level," Blatter said, adding that younger referees would be preferred. FIFA currently requires match officials to retire at 45. FIFA was already "doing well" in grassroots training, with $43 million budgeted for its global Refereeing Assistance Program before the next World Cup tournament kicks off. "This will go on, but we must do something for the top referees," Blatter said. He is a longtime supporter of referees being more dedicated and better paid, in order to raise standards and lower the risk of them being vulnerable to corruption. FIFA paid referees $50,000 to work in South Africa. FIFA rewarded the two professionals at the World Cup by assigning Englishman Howard Webb to referee the final, and giving Japan's Yuichi Nishimura duty as fourth official for Spain's 1-0 extra-time victory over the Netherlands. Webb took extended leave from his job as a policeman because England's wealthy Premier League helps fund a roster of professional match officials.

Former top female referee Dagmar Damkova has been appointed to head the Czech referee’s committee in a surprise move announced by the national football association’s executive committee on Monday.

The committee cleared out the current members of the committee and tasked Damkova with picking her own team to staff the future committee, the Football Association of the Czech Republic (FACR) said in a statement. The executive committee did not explain the full reason for the red card being given to current committee members, but said Damkova’s new post was logical following her appointment to the UEFA referees’ committee. She became the first woman appointed to the referees’ committee of European football’s governing body (UEFA) in July. The honor followed a pioneering path in Czech football for the 36-year-old woman. She was the first female official to referee a Czech men’s top-flight soccer league game in 2003. The all-male executive committee, which includes former Manchester United midfield star Karel Poborsky, said in a statement that Damkova’s top post in European football had sparked the wholesale changes at home. “When Dagmar Damkova was selected for the UEFA referees’ committee, what’s more as a woman, the time has come for such changes. It is the practice in most countries that a high official in UEFA heads the relevant committee at home,” the deputy chairman of the executive committee, Jindrich Rajchl, explained.

Damkova, who retired from refereeing top games in August, announced on September 3 that she was no longer standing to be head of the Czech football association, on advice from European football’s governing body, UEFA. “The reason was pretty simple. According to the opinion of people in UEFA, a position on the prestigious international referees’ committee could not be combined with the highest post in the national association,” she said, according to the FACR statement. “Because I want to work on UEFA’s referees’ committee, which so far none of us [Czechs] has done, I have decided to withdraw my candidacy to be the chairman of the football association,” Damkova said. The vote for the top job in Czech football takes place at a special meeting of the association in Prague on September 16.

Michael Hester, the first New Zealander to referee a match at the FIFA World Cup, has blown fulltime on his refereeing career. Hester has refereed at the World Cup, Confederations Cup, Club World Cup, Under-17 World Cup and Olympic Games as well many 'A' internationals. But the 39-year-old, whose partner is expecting their first child, has decided he can no longer balance the demands of refereeing and a fulltime career as a supply officer for the Royal New Zealand Navy.

"Refereeing is a hobby I've taken from council grounds to World Cup stadiums and it's been an amazing adventure," Hester said. "But the reality is that it's a hobby that you have to balance with your professional and personal demands. While I've been trying to find a way to stay involved and also work towards the next World Cup in Brazil, or certainly the campaign to be selected, some other challenges in my life mean it's no longer sustainable. I've had to prioritise and unfortunately refereeing has been the thing I've had to sacrifice."

Hester took up the whistle in 2001 and rose rapidly through the ranks before making the international list in 2007. Hester and O'Leary were selected among 30 referees for last year's World Cup, with fellow Kiwis Jan Hintz and Brent Best joining them as assistants in two Oceania trios. Hester refereed the Group B match between Korea Republic and Greece in Bloemfontein. While the memory of that match will live on for Hester, he also lists his initial selection for the Fifa list, refereeing the Wellington Phoenix's match against David Beckham's LA Galaxy, the South Pacific Games final between Fiji and New Caledonia and five games at the 2009 Under-17 World Cup as career highlights. But top of the list for Hester was a crucial 2009 Confederations Cup match between USA and Egypt, when Hester performed with distinction under intense pressure. "That match was probably the most exciting and exhilarating game I've ever been involved in," he said. "There was so much on the line for both teams. Italy were playing Brazil at the same time in the group and it came down to goal difference as to who was going to go through. Even though USA had a 3-0 lead in the last few minutes, one goal for Egypt would have put them through so that match was the most intense I've been involved in. We showed that despite coming from a relatively amateur part the world we could still deliver on the big stage." Hester acknowledges that the expanding use of technology could present a challenge for the Oceania region to keep pace.